Hi. This is my brain.

A thought:

You know how there are some people who are just... unique?

But they're not really unique because there are so many of them...

What's their word?

You know those people who eat really fantasitcally natural food and are all about whole grains and whole yoga and whole green beans from their own college garden? They call concerts "shows" and movies "films." They know all the little downtown shops and trendy independent online companies that sell the best journals and flat shoes and skinny jeans? They're outfits are like neverending urban outfitters catalogues and they're just smart and funny and hope to be intriguing because they are secretly awesome at taking "photographs" or drawing "sketches" or memorizing folk/indie/bluegrass tunes. (These are like easylistening, but vintage. So above Delilah.) Earth hues. Organic remedies.Get it?

I love watching those people.

I love talking to them on the chance that I understand what they're saying.

The truth is: 

Sometimes I really want to be one of those people.

But I'm not.

Besides all the Wendy's I eat and country I sing and pajamas I incorporate into my daily attire...

I have all this emotion and loudness and contradiction...

and I'm just way too intense to be so organically delicate.

I think that's okay.

Another confession:

Gosh I feel lonely on this blog lately.

I leave for such long periods of time, and when I come back, I feel like I have failed this little page.

It's like I come back to my old home,

after being away on something gross like business leave...

something I never wanted to do in the first place.

It smells blank, void, dusty.

There are cobwebs on my favorite chair

and the sun doesn't quite shine through the tired glass of my discarded windows.

Ya'll, it's like even the fish has died.

And no one knocks on the door anymore.

I know this is all very dramatic,

but it's the truth.

Today I even looked up another blog site to see if I should start over.

Gasp! Oh the disloyalty! I know!

But that hypothetical new page would have no idea...

No idea that I let go of my home for so long.

That my expression often doesn't make it past preliminary thought,

And that this has been the case for a dang long dusty time.

It would know no feelings of neglect.

But then it also wouldn't know me.

So I'm not sure it's the answer.

Is anyone out there? Can we still believe?

Learn.

There are so many drafts saved here, behind the scenes of this blog.

They are full of my confused heart.

They span my stories and end with questions.

Sarcastic lines reference deep conflict and all is misplaced.

So they get pushed to drafts-- hidden, unfinished.

But I have something to say today! Wanna listen? Here it is.

* * * * * 

Today I am walkin home from campus to the sounds of Amos Lee.

Behold, the wonders of putting your ancient ipod on shuffle.

I love this man because he just pounds away at that piano and sings himself out.

Slow soul amos lee.

I am thinkin of a time when I sat in a small cafe.

It was at least 1 in the morning,

There were paintings on the wall. Not by Van Gogh or Rembrandt, but by some guy down the street. He could have been sitting next to me for all I knew. These paintings were wild, the kind where brushstrokes make little mountains of unabashed texture, unrefined emotion. There were a few mismatched tables, with creaky wooden and rod-iron and plastery chairs. There some couches from the thrift store of mustard yellow and faded floral prints. Nothing matched but it all belonged, and everywhere, everywhere was this late-night golden glowing. That's why we all fit there. We were not the same, but we had some golden around us.

In the corner was a piano. In it's silence, it seemed to have come from a forsaken life. It landed in that cafe as a refugee, and was making a new home. Half-way through my vegan sandwich, this piano was found by a scrubby guy in faded green pants. You know the kind, he was a stranger full of earth tones and handmade beanies. He sat at that piano and played Amos Lee. And I knew the words! There were only about 7 people in that cafe, and we all sang or hummed along. It was a phenomenon of belonging.

Then it's Dave Matthews in my ears. This song is called #41. My last two years of high school I had a friend who loved Dave Matthews. We used to listen to this on the way home from school in her grandma's convertible. We would sing with the top down and talk about it was very peculiar of Dave to name a song after a number. That's what she called him anyway, Dave. Oh strange, strange Dave. On one of those convertible afternoons we stopped the car to run and jump through sprinklers. And let me tell you, in the 3 houses I lived in during that time, all from different parts of a blending suburbia, the sprinklers are what kept me alive. Because every once in a while in these neighborhoods, the stars align. Newly installed sprinkler systems pop up from under the grass at exactly the moment when you're seeking a spectacular, spontaneous freedom. Later that night, we jumped in the lake with a boy I loved. Actually, I think that's when I started to love him.And me and that boy-- we would sing Dave Matthews like our hearts depended on him. Crash into me. I do know, where you go, is where I want to be.

These people have left my life now.

But don't you see? That's not the point!

This is life. 

The pages of my confusion and uncertainty?

I can sing home inside them.

This is what it's like to be alive.

I am skippin home in my baseball hat, elated to be taken down these avenues of my own experience,

all by unexpected music.

But is it just the music?

Perhaps the shotgun immediacy of my euphoria is due to some chemical imbalance that fuels the hereditary instability of the emotional women in my family. (So I've been told.)

Maybe it's the February sun today and how my arms shiver in anticipation of spring.

Maybe we don't need a reason people.

I just love Amos and Dave.

Thanks for the remembering.

Let's be alive.

Oh man.

I'm sittin in this computer lab on a messy Tuesday that campus thinks is Monday.

This means I have Monday classes. They even cut out Tuesday devotional, my new solace.

Why?

Why do we do that?

I feel like I may be doing this with my life.

Confusing it for something it has been before, but doesn't have to be anymore.

I just love God and I want to do good things.

I switched my ipod away from Eve 6 this mornin, and into songs about Him.

I'm trying to hear where He's coming from.

Which part of my life next God? And where?

(I don't need to know the how.)

I like substituting capital H-i-m

for capital G-o-d.

Is it strange that I am punctuating diety in this blog?

That God can exist within something so modern and formatted?

I don't think so.

I think God is everywhere if you let him be.

I am surprised by how relieved I feel just to type here.

Word word words.

My words.

I haven't seen them in days. Weeks maybe.

When I admit that, sirens go off in my mind.

Flashing.Red.Lights.

They are sayin

COME BACK TO YOURSELF.

And I'm sayin

HELP! HELP!

I'll be back.

I promise.

May there be a reason.

I miss writing.
I miss writing.
I really really miss writing here.